The world viewed from outside.pdfVIP

ELSXIER Journal of Geometry and Physics 24 (I 998) 303-333 JOURNAL OF GEOMETRY,dh PHYSICS The world viewed from outside Istvan OzsvAth a,*, Engelbert L. Schiicking ’ a frogrums in Mathematical Sciences. .!Jniversi@ of Texas at Dal/us Richardson. TX 75083-06X8, USA ’ Department of Physics. New York Universit?: 4 Washington Place, Neb~, York, NY lOOO3, USA Received 20 September 1996; received in revised form 30 January 1997 Abstract Simple models of the cosmos are given by space-forms of a stretched Ssphere. The isometric embedding of these manifolds into higher-dimensional Euclidean spaces is an unsolved problem that has yielded some partial solutions of bizarre beauty. SN@.Class.: General relativity; Differential geometry I991 MSC: 53(330,83(315.83F05 Keyvord~: Cosmology: Stretched 3-sphere; Euclidean spaces 1. Introduction. The S3 The idea that space is finite is at least as old as the ancient Greek philosophers. However, if they also believed in R3 of Euclid’s geometry, they were suffering from schizophrenia. The paradigm of a compact world is the S”, the sphere in four dimensions. It is easily imagined as an analogon to an intrinsic description of the S’. One can visualize the S* by playing Santa describing co-latitude circles about his home. Their circumference increases less than linearly with the radius. reaches a maximum at the equator and shrinks thereafter finally to zero at the south pole. According to the Swiss mathematician Andreas Speiser [3 I] it was Dante Alighieri who envisioned the S’ as a model of his hell-centered medieval universe. Santa is replaced by the prince of darkness in the center of the earth The co-latitude circles are now upgraded in dimension to concentric spheres like the surface of terra followed by those of the seven planets and the outermost of the fixed stars. But beyond this sphere of maximal area Dante * Corresponding author. E-mail: ozsvath@utdallas.edu 0393-0440/98/$19,00 0 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved P/I s